UBC researcher heading up team testing drug that might treat COVID-19
Posted April 3, 2020 2:43 pm.
Last Updated April 3, 2020 2:48 pm.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A drug that might be a treatment for COVID-19 will soon be tested by an international team led by a researcher at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Josef Penninger says early infection may be blocked by medication targeting the virus, which is similar to SARS.
“Our previous work has helped to rapidly identify ACE2 as the entry gate for SARS-CoV-2, which explains a lot about the disease. Now we know a soluble form of ACE2 that catches the virus away, could be indeed a very rational therapy that specifically targets the gate the virus must take to infect us. There is hope for this horrible pandemic,” he explains.
The professor in the faculty of medicine is also the director of the Life Sciences Institute and the Canada 150 Research Chair in Functional Genetics at UBC.
Clinical trials of a drug that might block #COVID19 will soon be done by an international research team headed by @ubc‘s Dr. Josef Penninger.
He says early infection MIGHT be blocked by medication targeting the virus which is similar to SARS. @NEWS1130— Marcella Bernardo (@Bernardo1130) April 3, 2020
The focus of the study, partially funded by the Canadian federal government, is trying to keep COVID-19 from infecting blood vessels and kidneys.
“We are hopeful our results have implications for the development of a novel drug for the treatment of this unprecedented pandemic,” Penninger says in a release issued by UBC.
Clinical trials for this anti-viral therapy called APN01 (human recombinant soluble angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 – hrsACE2) will be handled by the European biotech company Apeiron Biologics.
Emergency funding from Ottawa will focus on accelerating the development, testing, and implementation of measures to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.
NEWS 1130 has reached out to the doctor in charge of the project but he is currently in Vienna.
